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“Easy, Erect, and Noble”

by Graham Hood

Hans Lorenz

With those words—“easy, erect and noble”—Thomas
Jefferson described the George Washington he knew “intimately
and thoroughly.” And this is the man we see in the full size
of life in this great portrait, who stands easily, who meets and
holds our eyes, not haughtily, as might be expected of a soldier
who had taken the most powerful empire on earth down a notch, but
with the sweet taste of victory on his lips and a carefully controlled
satisfaction in his face.

“His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what
one would wish.” Jefferson, a very different sort of man from
Washington, wrote these words in the tranquility of retirement and
might have written them with this picture in mind. He went on to
say that his friend was “the best horseman of his age, the
most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.” We
understand the depth of his esteem. Jefferson did not pay such compliments
easily. We gaze at the portrait and we readily see, from the easiness
of his pose, that Washington’s figure on the horse that nearby
awaits him would be graceful indeed.

Here, painted at the height of the War for Independence, is the man on
whom the whole cause seemed to depend, thought of sometimes as a weak
soldier, sometimes as a slab of incommunicable granite, but increasingly
as the war continued, as a man of extraordinary physical and moral strength.
It is without doubt the first state portrait of the new America, and a
most impressive image in its own right.

It would be natural to suppose that it was commissioned by a grateful
United States Congress. After all, here was the man whose dedication and
integrity had brought the American cause out of some very deep depths,
who was to succeed Williamsburg’s Peyton Randolph as “The
Father of Our Country,” and forever. When Congress summoned the
commander in chief to report to it in Philadelphia, in late 1778, the
future seemed brighter than it had for many arduous months. Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and New England had been cleared of English forces and their
hated mercenaries. France was now allied with America in the war against
its archenemy.

If Washington had not prevailed in open battles, he at least had shown
himself to be a master of retreat and adept at astonishing surprises that
kept the enemy off balance. But Congress in these years seemed incapable
of such largesse, and it is to the honor of the Supreme Executive Council,
the governing body of Pennsylvania, that this great portrait was commissioned
in January 1779.

The council, “deeply sensible how much the liberty, safety and
happiness of America in general and Pennsylvania in particular is owing
to His Excellency General Washington and the brave men under his command,”
requested the general to sit for his portrait, which was to be placed
in the council chamber so “that the contemplation of it may excite
others to tread in the same glorious and disinterested steps which lead
to public happiness and private honor.” The council also requested
that the general sit to a member of its own legislature, portraitist Charles
Willson Peale. As Washington had sat to Peale three times previously,
the first as an affluent planter at Mount Vernon in 1772, he gave his
immediate assent. His sittings were completed within ten days, and the
portrait was finished in a month.

It was undoubtedly Washington’s choice that he be posed at the
scene of his finest battles to date. In the lower-right foreground the
captured German battle flags of Trenton are heaped. The British ensign
is tossed on the ground to the left. Two cannons are shown in the foreground,
representing two battles, while the distant view of Nassau Hall, in front
of which soldiers in blue escort a column of red-coated prisoners, clearly
indicates the battlefield of Princeton. Though Washington’s pose,
as he leans on the convenient cannon barrel, seems casual, the American
national ensign flying bravely in the upper right, the massed bayonets,
and the expectant horse held by a ready aide all proclaim the power and
capacity to strike again. For Washington, the details of military uniform
were important. In Colonial Williamsburg’s version of this portrait—there
are other copies—which is dated 1780, he is shown with the blue
satin ribbon of the commander in chief across his chest and three stars
on his epaulettes. The use of the blue ribbon to distinguish him from
other senior officers dated from 1775. But, by personal order of the general
dated June 18, 1780, silver stars on the epaulettes were meant to replace
the ribbons—three stars for the commander in chief, two for a major
general, one for a brigadier. Quite why Peale included ribbon and stars
in this version is unknown, though there is no doubt that the ribbon enhances
the pictorial qualities of the figure.

The
Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin played middleman in Rockefeller’s
purchase of the Peale.

- Colonial Williamsburg

It was necessary to get the details right. Peale
copied the Hessian flags from the originals. He toured the battlefields,
making sure that he had the topography correct, and he made studies
of the cannons. Within three days of Washington’s last sitting
a local newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet, included a laudatory
reference to the still-unfinished portrait. Expectations of a major
new “resemblance” of the military hero ran high, and
replicas at thirty guineas specie were already spoken of as being
ordered.

It is impossible to believe that, after agreeing on the setting
at Princeton and Trenton, the general and the painter did not discuss
the focal point of this important commission—the pose of the
central figure—and come to full agreement on it. Yet Washington
was famously not a relaxed man, except that he appeared so on horseback.
In this picture he is relaxed to the point of being languid, almost
insolently so. Whatever Washington was, he was not insolent. Obviously
he had to occupy front and center stage in the pictorial space,
but quite so easily? No other portrait of him suggests this degree
of relaxation.

There is a plausible explanation, which puts this state portrait in a
wider context. The pose is virtually identical to that of a famous, full-length,
life-size state portrait that the general knew well and that the painter
had had ample opportunity to study—the coronation portrait of King
George III, painted by Allen Ramsay less than twenty years before. A replica
of this portrait, together with its pendent of the queen, arrived in Williamsburg
in 1768 and was installed in the ballroom of the Governor’s Palace.
Between that date and 1775, Washington was at the Palace many times, as
his diary records. The portrait of the reigning monarch was something
he could not possibly have missed or ignored.

Charles Willson Peale may have studied the new king’s portrait
while he was training in London at the studio of expatriate Benjamin West
from early 1767 to mid-1769. This was precisely the period when West was
brought favorably to the attention of the king, who commissioned a large
painting from him. It was the beginning of a long friendship between monarch
and transplanted colonial. It is impossible to believe that Peale did
not share in the rejoicing at West’s good fortune and great promise
and, given his artistic curiosity in this period of his youth, difficult
to believe that he was not somehow aware of the royal portrait, which
was still quite new.

If Peale, on his return from England, did not also see a replica in
the statehouse in Philadelphia, he certainly had opportunities to see
the replica that Washington saw, at the Palace in Williamsburg. Peale
visited the Virginia capital twice in the early ’70s, the second
time, in 1774, to paint another full-length portrait—and it should
be noted that such commissions were not common. This time it was to be
of Peyton Randolph, speaker of the house and perhaps the most, certainly
the second most, powerful man in the colony. But this time the occasion
of the commission had nothing to do with royalty or military glory. Peale,
a Mason, was to paint a portrait of Randolph as the newly appointed Provincial
Grand Master of the Masonic Order. As the sitter was to be painted in
“full Masonic costume” with regalia, it is easy to believe
that Randolph walked the artist the short distance to the Palace, which
he knew intimately, to look at another full-length figure adorned with
much regalia, the portrait of George III.

The portrait of Randolph became one of the treasures of the Library
of Congress, where the large mahogany book-presses that Peyton had inherited
from his father, Sir John, also finished up. They had stood in the Randolph
house on Market Square for fifty years before being sold to kinsman Jefferson,
along with the books in them. Jefferson later sold them to the government
to become the nucleus of the Library of Congress. The portrait of Peyton
was destroyed in the fire of 1869.

Who first suggested this triumphantly ironic juxtaposition
of provincial George—who had been denied a commission in the
king’s army in the 1750s because he was provincial—with
the most powerful George on earth? Painter, sitter, or witty, visually
informed onlooker? Or no one? Perhaps it was nothing more than a
coincidence. After all, life is often more ironic than art, and
perhaps it just happened that way. But given the wide range of poses
the general and the portraitist had to choose from, the prospect
of such an amazing coincidence is too much for me to believe.

In any event, the portrait was rapturously received. Even before
it was finished, the unofficial embassy of Spain in Philadelphia
ordered five copies. The French ambassador bespoke one for his king,
and the American envoy put in his request to take one to Holland
with him. Despite this glittering success, Peale was disappointed
that the state governments of Maryland and Virginia were conspicuously
absent from the order books. Though there is some confusion about
which replicas were actually bought and paid for, there are at least
nine full-length versions in existence, one of which, destined to
go to Holland with Henry Laurens, was captured by a British naval
vessel commanded by the grandson of that governor of Virginia, the
earl of Albemarle, who had authorized the twenty-two-year-old Washington
to bear dispatches to the French on the frontier. The arrival of
the portrait in England, together with evidence to prove that Holland
was conspiring with the rebellious colonies, caused quite a stir.

Two
of the more than 200 copies of the George III portrait painted
by the Ramsay studio hang at Colonial Williamsburg—one
in the Governor’s Palace and one in the DeWitt Wallace
Decorative Arts Museum. A copy may have influenced Peale’s
Washington.

-Hans Lorenz

One wonders if the king ever set eyes on that particular version, or
perhaps on a mezzotint of it that Peale produced in numbers in mid-1780
for “two dollars, or the value thereof in current money.”
If he did, it is doubtful that his comment was as shrewd and insightful
as the one reported by Benjamin West. Conversing with West during the
course of the war, the king asked the American-born painter what Washington
would do if he prevailed over the English forces. West said that he thought
Washington would return to his farm. In West’s words, the king responded,
“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Colonial Williamsburg's version of the portrait came from the Carter
family of Shirley, bought by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1928 for the not
inconsiderable sum of $75,000. Wildly exaggerated values, of up to a quarter
of a million dollars, supposedly from reliable sources, had been floating
around for months before the deal was consummated. Rockefeller wanted
to buy the house and land—this was the ideal plantation with which
to supplement the historical messages of the colonial capital he was restoring.
Though its owners were much reduced in circumstances, the plantation wasn’t
for sale.

Asked how the family could even consider parting with this icon of the
great man, which had apparently hung at Shirley for well over a hundred
years, then-doyenne Marion Carter Oliver said offhandedly, “Well,
he wasn’t a member of the family.”

What the Carters did do with the portrait, for well over a century,
which proved to be of the greatest importance, was nothing. Nothing, that
is, other than keep it out of the rain and away from too much light, fire,
and sharp instruments. They preserved it from the well-meaning but often
ruinous attentions of “restorers” of those times, with the
result that we now judge it in superb condition and one of the truly great
renditions of our national hero.

To me, this is the most stirring portrait of “The Father of Our
Country,” though there is no doubt that Gilbert Stuart later did
beautiful sketches and some lovely portraits of the older man. It is revealing
to compare this Peale full length with Stuart’s full length—the
famous and recently newsworthy “Lansdowne” portrait of 1796.
The intervening sixteen years would seem to have borne very hard on the
sitter. Though the pressures of the Revolutionary War had been arduous,
the wearing effects of six years of the presidency would seem to have
been much more. In the later portrait the head is not the head of a living
man but of a monument. The figure seems reduced in its nobility, while
the gesture is merely a formula, though the strong masculine hand is beautifully
painted. This is truly the institution, not the man.

Stuart’s
“Vaughan type” Washington portrait was considered
an unsatisfactory likeness.

- Colonial Williamsburg

Even Stuart’s earlier head and shoulders portrait
of the president—the “Vaughan” type—was criticized
for its unsatisfactory likeness, but the best versions of that portrait
are brimming with life compared with the Lansdowne full length. Peale
was not the only critic, and he could hardly be called a disinterested
one, but he detailed the distortions he saw in the Vaughan likeness
from the person he knew—the complexion too florid, the character
heavily exaggerated, and so on. The full length is even more so, on
all counts. It is a long way, biographically and artistically, from
the “easy, erect, and noble” young soldier to the national
monument of Stuart’s portrait. Yet it is the latter that is
more widely known today.

Visitors to Colonial Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace Museum may spend
as long as they wish gazing at one of the museum’s, indeed the nation’s
treasures, in its original frame and splendor, being inspired “to
tread in the same glorious and disinterested steps which lead to public
happiness and private honor.” They might also note, as Jon Prown,
former Colonial Williamsburg curator and now president of the Chipstone
Foundation, has pointed out, how symbolic it is, in more contemporary
interpretive terms, that “Our Country’s” progenitor
should be seen leaning so heavily on what he is leaning on. He also notes
the particular and apposite way the painter shaped the sitter’s
nether garment. Be that as it may, this portrait arouses many thoughts
and feelings and spirits, and it could not be more fitting that such a
fine version resides at Williamsburg.

Graham Hood, was Colonial Williamsburg’s vice
president for collections and museums and Carlisle H. Humelsine Curator
until his retirement in December 1997. His series “Attics Anonymous:
On the Road for Colonial Williamsburg,” appeared in the spring
and autumn 2001 journals.